Tabs

Friday, 26 June 2009

Neruda, Pablo -- Personal Reflections

Neruda, the Chilean poet and political activist, has a way with expressing intimate thoughts. His poems always seem as if they splash the emotions of the inner self through the medium of words. Reading his poems can never be a continous process. The poems have to be taken in line by line and word by word. Added to that, if the reader is anything like me, a dreamer of the highest order, then every poem has something from the pages of the past to think on.

I must mention the lovely movie "Il Postino" (The Postman), the 1994 Italian film directed by Michael Radford. The film tells a story in which the real life Pablo Neruda forms a relationship with a simple postman who learns to love poetry. The film has lovely stills, music and fabulous acting by almost all of them. The film has various awards and credits to its name. A story told from the heart which touches and strikes a chord.

Finally a lovely poem of Neruda's (I had a slight difficulty in choosing a poem of Neruda's but then this one made me linger longer and thats why I chose this one):

If You Forget Me - Neruda, Pablo

I want you to knowone thing.

You know how this is:if I lookat the crystal moon, at the red branchof the slow autumn at my window,if I touchnear the firethe impalpable ashor the wrinkled body of the log,everything carries me to you,as if everything that exists,aromas, light, metals,were little boatsthat sailtoward those isles of yours that wait for me.

If suddenlyyou forget medo not look for me,for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,the wind of bannersthat passes through my life,and you decideto leave me at the shoreof the heart where I have roots,rememberthat on that day,at that hour,I shall lift my armsand my roots will set offto seek another land.

Butif each day,each hour,you feel that you are destined for mewith implacable sweetness,if each day a flowerclimbs up to your lips to seek me,ah my love, ah my own,in me all that fire is repeated,in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,my love feeds on your love, beloved,and as long as you live it will be in your armswithout leaving mine.